MP Server-side mods and how clients use/sync with them

[metafa]

We just talked about this in the other thread, but I will try to summarize the arguments, correct me if I'm wrong.

So we all hope there will be dedicated community-run servers (and I cannot imagine there won't, let's assume there will be) which will open the door for server-side mods, which will in turn require mods also being run on the client side.

So the pre-200x approach (and also the warband-approach) would be to have the players go online and download a specific mod and extract it at the correct spot. Far not everyone knows how to do that or is prepared to do that. Then you have to connect to the correct server that runs this mod at the same version. Version changes? Rinse-repeat, server hasn't upgraded? Too bad.

The biggest argument here is that this effectively "splits" the community, into those who regularly do download mods and those who are eternally stuck with native. Many players, certainly in this forum want slight changes or bigger changes to the MP gameplay, whole new missions could be created, each and every one with their own equipment selection. Don't like how they do it on this server? Try the next. But to effectively let everyone come to experience this, and not have the player base split up over this issue, the engine how mods between server and client are synced needs to change compare to the way it works in Warband.

So I hope Bannerlord will do it differently. There are very good examples how this is done - Arma3 in example. You connect to a server that runs your favorite mod (or one that people told you about you must try) and all mods are downloaded from the server to the client. All these are then of course restricted exclusively to gameplay-mods, no access to any part of the HD and to anything other then the current in-game instance in system memory. Or maybe even better (because more transparency) DayZ - you click on a server and get a popup about the installed mods - and can download them with a click - and start playing on that server.

Please. Please. Have a system like that for Bannerlord! It would be a game changer and I think most complaining here would kind of disappear over night, as then the awesome community can offer more or less each and every change anyone here wishes and which is just unrealistic for the official developers to implement. Whatever they do will never satisfy all or even most people. And that way there will be variety without locking huge swathes of players away from each other. Thank you for considering it!

EDIT:

Just for clearification: I don't mean the SP/client-only mods that people install for singleplayer or to "update HD graphics" or something like that. That's completely separate. This is about the mods that clients need to run in order to be compatibel with the version of the mods running on the server. Like in example a Loadout selection screen for "hardcore servers" or whatever. There are a certain portion of functions that need to be run on the client when connected to a server which is modded in a certain way. They need to run in a sandbox only counting towards that particular gaming session, and have no influence whatsoever on how you game on other servers or what you do in SP. This is not science-fiction, this exists in multiple games right now.

 

[Brynjahr]

Personally think that Warband does it perfectly as of now, tell people the mods used and then people go and download them like any other game.

 

[metafa]

Personally think that Warband does it perfectly as of now, tell people the mods used and then people go and download them like any other game.

No. It's a really old way of doing it. There are a sh*tload of people who never install any mods because they either don't know even know that exists or don't how or are afraid or just don't bother. I personally plead for many ppl to be patient and just later play on their favorite server with favorite mods, and they say this will split the community and I agree. Games who do it correctly exist, and BL should adapt to that.

 

[Brynjahr]

No. It's a really old way of doing it. There are a sh*tload of people who never install any mods because they either don't know even know that exists or don't how or are afraid or just don't bother. I personally plead for many ppl to be patient and just later play on their favorite server with favorite mods, and they say this will split the community and I agree. Games who do it correctly exist, and BL should adapt to that.

Can you give an example of a game that does this as real popular ARMA servers did not back in the day, they only told you the mods in use and not how or where to download it was all done on arma3sync with a ftp deposit for the files

 

[metafa]

Can you give an example of a game that does this as real popular ARMA servers did not back in the day, they only told you the mods in use and not how or where to download it was all done on arma3sync with a ftp deposit for the files

As I clearified in the OP, this is really about in-MP game functionality not useful outside of the game session instance of the server where you connect to. In Arma3 you can go on "Life" servers or "Wasteland" server which really have a complete different gameplay than native and you download those mods from the server upon connecting. In Life there are designated police, you can earn money by doing drug-runs, or earn money "legally" by fishing and selling it and buy your gun or go "dark". In Wasterland it's basically DayZ without zombies, you start low equipped and find guns and equipment in houses and cars. Not anywhere near native MP gameplay. And never had to run to any external side to download these mods. No system code can be executed just modded gamefiles being loaded which are run in a sandbox and only concern in-game in-session memory and code. Another example is DayZ: You click on a server in the designated server browser launcher, a popup opens and tells you, you need mod X, Y and Z or to update them, click, load, done, connect.

 

[Brynjahr]

Spoiler: Quote

As I clearified in the OP, this is really about in-MP game functionality not useful outside of the game session instance of the server where you connect to. In Arma3 you can go on "Life" servers or "Wasteland" server which really have a complete different gameplay than native and you download those mods from the server upon connecting. In Life there are designated police, you can earn money by doing drug-runs, or earn money "legally" by fishing and selling it and buy your gun or go "dark". In Wasterland it's basically DayZ without zombies, you start low equipped and find guns and equipment in houses and cars. Not anywhere near native MP gameplay. And never had to run to any external side to download these mods. No system code can be executed just modded gamefiles being loaded which are run in a sandbox and only concern in-game in-session memory and code. Another example is DayZ: You click on a server in the designated server browser launcher, a popup opens and tells you, you need mod X, Y and Z or to update them, click, load, done, connect.

I played ARMA for thousands of hours and was a big player on many life servers such as ALRP, Arma Life, Metropolis Life and Anzus and also played a few hundred hours in wasteland but this is simply not true for any decent popular server using mods in ARMA, they all needed you to get an external exe used to download mods specific for the server and then they exclusively worked on that server and no others, it might have been true for life servers which were barely modded with no equipment or textures or features but not for actual good mods with huge communities

 

[metafa]

I played ARMA for thousands of hours and was a big player on many life servers such as ALRP, Arma Life, Metropolis Life and Anzus and also played a few hundred hours in wasteland but this is simply not true for any decent popular server using mods in ARMA, they all needed you to get an external exe used to download mods specific for the server and then they exclusively worked on that server and no others, it might have been true for life servers which were barely modded with no equipment or textures or features but not for actual good mods with huge communities

Yes, I am not talking about downloading Gigabytes of stuff, that you do have to do on your own. Wasteland and Life specifically have vastly different gameplay than native MP, like completely different, it's only CODE that changed, not models, animations, ect. I don't know what you played, but on these two modes, the client didn't need to download anything from external sources, it all happened right there in the server browser. And PLEASE can we know not fight over whether you played on some servers in Arma that required you to download GiGs of extra stuff from somewhere but stay on the issue of modded game functionality code in Bannerlord! I don't think there is any good reason to let players intentionally go on moddb to download s.th. extract it to the correct folder, start up the game and then be restricted only to servers running exactly that mod at that version. It might be how we did stuff up until now but using that in Bannerlord would be a huge strategic error.

 

[Brynjahr]

Why would it be an error?
"if it ain't broke don't fix it"
I think it works perfectly fine and almost every game uses this system

 

[metafa]

Why would it be an error?
"if it ain't broke don't fix it"
I think it works perfectly fine and almost every game uses this system

Many here would disagree with you. Why lol? Why are you doing this now? You have nostalgic feelings about going on moddb? Wtf. Mods can still have their on page on moddb, you can STILL download the stuff there, it just wouldn't be required so we have more people playing on all available servers.

 

[Brynjahr]

Many here would disagree with you. Why lol? Why are you doing this now? You have nostalgic feelings about going on moddb? Wtf. Mods can still have their on page on moddb, you can STILL download the stuff there, it just wouldn't be required so we have more people playing on all available servers.

Do a poll if you think that then, so far i see one opinion with no evidence to back it up
nice baiting big man
Some mods aren't suitable for newbies to the game such as mercenaries or pw imagine joining thinking that's normal MP

 

[metafa]

Do a poll if you think that then, so far i see one opinion with no evidence to back it up
nice baiting big man
Some mods aren't suitable for newbies to the game such as mercenaries or pw imagine joining thinking that's normal MP

Yea, then they go play somewhere else, even without completely quitting the game and restarting it. Holy cow. There is no downside, except that you feel like making a point now. I don't even care. This what I proposed is better. Without it, every prediction of "BL WiLL fAiL DUD" will come true. This could save it.

 

[Brynjahr]

Yea, then they go play somewhere else, even without completely quitting the game and restarting it. Holy cow. There is no downside, except that you wanna make a point now. I don't even care. This what I proposed is better. Without it, every prediction of "BL WiLL fAiL DUD" will come true. This could save it.

First sentence makes 0 sense but I'll assume you're continuing to bait to give your thread some attention at this big age is rather embarrassing to try and duel someone whos simply asking about your idea and why it's worth it when the existing system is tried and tested to work perfectly fine for the community we have and actually the entire game industry. So without your idea that isn't even explained fully the game will fail you're saying? okay great point but check the ego. I do not think changing mods to download from the server will save the game and if it could it is impossible to do it now as we don't even have public run servers.

I shall stop replying now as you are constantly trying to bait a reaction and its frankly embarrassing to stay on this thread

 

[metafa]

First sentence makes 0 sense but I'll assume you're continuing to bait to give your thread some attention at this big age is rather embarrassing to try and duel someone whos simply asking about your idea and why it's worth it when the existing system is tried and tested to work perfectly fine for the community we have and actually the entire game industry. So without your idea that isn't even explained fully the game will fail you're saying? okay great point but check the ego. I do not think changing mods to download from the server will save the game and if it could it is impossible to do it now as we don't even have public run servers.

I shall stop replying now as you are constantly trying to bait a reaction and its frankly embarrassing to stay on this thread

Just in the other thread people are saying "mods will split the community" yea but only when you need to download them from external sources. Otherwise it's convenient to check them out, it's also convenient to intentionally not. You just don't have enough imagination to picture a M&B game where newbies to the franchise check out everything there is on offer. Maybe you like it like it was - confined in your own space thinking no one will ever find you in your dark corner of virtuality. I don't want that and I reject it. We need a modern mod manager integrated into the server browser.

Bait reaction lol. I want this to be implemented, I don't give a flying flamingo whether you're reacting.

 

[Silen]

I agree with you about this, it's something that has been suggested frequently before — I even tried bringing it to the developers' attention directly. Automatically downloading mods to join a server, especially since servers will be able to run multiple mods at once, would be a great aid in retaining players and eliminating that barrier which would keep them from joining this or that modded server. I don't know how technically feasible this would be though, perhaps could make use of Steam Workshop.

That said though, having this feature won't excuse leaving Native issues unaddressed. For instance, if combat remains in this state, and we're forced to resort to a combat mod, it won't be supported by matchmaking which would severely limit its accessibility.

 

[metafa]

I agree with you about this, it's something that has been suggested frequently before — I even tried bringing it to the developers' attention directly. Automatically downloading mods to join a server, especially since servers will be able to run multiple mods at once, would be a great aid in retaining players and eliminating that barrier which would keep them from joining this or that modded server. I don't know how technically feasible this would be though, perhaps could make use of Steam Workshop.

That said though, having this feature won't excuse leaving Native issues unaddressed. For instance, if combat remains in this state, and we're forced to resort to a combat mod, it won't be supported by matchmaking which would severely limit its accessibility.

It's very feasibly imo. And the thing with combat is, any change or system will be viewed as broken by someone. With a server browser e.g. like DayZ you could view the used mods and if "that" mod you're liking or disliking is there/not there you'd join and otherwise move on. Exactly that's the thing. In code multiple mods can be used that change completely different aspects. You could have a mission mod that provides an "assassination" game mode while also completely independent from that have a combat mod that changes this and that cooldown. E.g. you can see what's used on the server before joining like in DayZ works which is also integrated with the Steam Workshop.